Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Lonely Spirit in Opportunity's shadow

NASA's two Mars rovers are continuing to do remarkably well, considering their age. Spirit is the older of the two and has an important milestone coming up this week. Wednesday will mark its 1000th sol, or Martian day, on the Red Planet.

Despite this, Spirit has been virtually ignored of late. Its younger sibling Opportunity is attracting all the attention, having recently arrived at the eye-popping Victoria crater.

While the rovers' handlers gleefully prepare to drive Opportunity into the crater to see its layered rocks up close, Spirit sits forlornly on the same rocky slope it's occupied for months.

It has been weathering the cold and dark of the southern hemisphere's winter, and hasn't had enough solar power to drive away from its spot on a south-facing slope in a group of hills.

Spirit is making the best of the situation, spending much of its time making detailed observations of the rocks in its vicinity. But there's only so much it can do from where it is.

It has been looking at the same areas again and again, hoping that something might have changed while it was looking away ? a little dust blown in from elsewhere, perhaps. But it hasn't seen any clear changes so far.

It also glances up at the sky every once in a while in the hopes of spotting clouds, which might shed some light on Martian weather. But it hasn't seen any definite signs of clouds to date.

So the recent arrival of spring at Spirit's location should be a relief to the rover scientists, who are surely looking forward to a change of scenery around the elder sibling.

They plan to start driving Spirit around again about a month from now, making one of its first stops at a rock outcrop called Home Plate, which may be the ancient remains of an explosive volcanic eruption.

When it gets there, it may gain back some of the limelight from Opportunity. But that is not likely to last long. Opportunity will soon be driving down into the scientifically tantalising Victoria crater, and is sure to steal the show again when it does.

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